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Thursday, 13 September 2012

Blog 96: Death

Death followed them through the crowd struggling to keep
up with them in the dense mass of people. Dressed in black and skeletal of
appearance he was nonetheless human, just thin and distinctly angular like the
other two. He had to force others aside to keep up with them.

Having just met the two asked him why he called himself
Death. He told them that it was a nickname taken from an idea he'd had decades
before. As they stopped to talk they felt the crush of the crowd as they were
moved by the mass. The other two were dressed in rags, thin, well -worn
garments that had become tattered during their long lives.

Death told them that once he'd spent a lot of time
considering existence and eternity and he had wondered what it would be like if
it ended. The two stared at him blankly, scratching at their beards. He'd tried
to imagine a scenario where existence was not eternal, where none were
immortal. They still said nothing, the idea was ridiculous and to the mind of
the older man, a waste of time. Time however was infinite he realised and so
let Death continue. Death, their new friend said, was the name he'd given to
the concept of an end to life. With it the population would not rise endlessly,
and he supposed that life itself might hold more meaning. He looked around at
the crowd about them who did little with their time, it seemed pointless. There
was no urge to be urgent, no need of haste, if they had it in their mind to do
something it would happen, someday.

The two friends asked what would happen to those who had
undergone the transition from life to death. Death said that they would break down;
in time they would be nothing, no longer occupying space that could be used by
the living. They all agreed that more space would be welcome, there was no room
anywhere to do more than stand and the problem only got worse. Eternal life was
something but in the long term the realisation of a concept like death would
have been useful.